S2 EP223 – Lessons from the Disney Movies Frozen I and II

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’ve been very moved by the messages in the two Disney movies, Frozen I and Frozen II, as well as how much it reflects Inner Bonding, and I want to share this with you.

Each film has a major profound message. In Frozen I, the message is “An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.” We don’t find out what this really means until near the end of the movie.

In Frozen II, the message is “Do the next right thing.” I will be referring more to these messages as we go through this podcast.

The different characters in Frozen reflect the different aspects of us as we define them in Inner Bonding. Olaf, the snowman, exemplifies aspects our inner child. Olaf introduces himself to people by saying, “Hi! I’m Olaf! I love warm hugs!” Olaf is consistently joyful and optimistic, as well as caring, compassionate, empathic, playful, and highly creative. You can’t help but love Olaf! 

This is who we are in a part of our true soul self, the part of our soul that exists within our body. It is helpful to imagine our soul essence as a bright and shining child, the natural light within that is an individualized expression of Divine love. Like Olaf, this aspect of ourselves is ageless – it always has been and always will be, and it evolves through our life experiences. Our inner child contains our unique gifts and talents, our natural wisdom and intuition, our curiosity and sense of wonder, our playfulness and spontaneity, and our ability to love and connect with others. This is an unwounded aspect of the soul that can never be harmed. It was never touched by any abuse we suffered. Instead, our inner child may have been hidden away waiting to be retrieved through a healing process. Healing can occur because of this unbroken part in each of us. Healing is apparent when you have retrieved and deeply know and value this aspect of yourself, who you really are – a child of the unconditional love that is spirit. Practicing Inner Bonding leads to our healing and to the reclaiming of the beautiful qualities of your soul. 

Our inner child often communicates with us through our feelings and is part of our infallible inner and higher guidance system. Your inner guidance system lets you know through your feelings what is good or bad for you, right or wrong for you, and when you are loving yourself and when you are abandoning yourself. The feelings you may experience that come naturally from your inner child are the joy, peace, and love that, as an adult, are the result of being loving to yourself and others. Our inner child also has the natural feelings of sadness and sorrow over people’s inhumanity to each other, loneliness when you have no one with whom to share love, heartache and heartbreak over others’ mean and rejecting behavior and various kinds of loss, grief over loss, helplessness over others’ choices and outcomes, outrage over injustice, as well as fear of real and present danger. These existential feelings of life need to be attended to and nurtured with deep compassion. 

The feelings that our inner child feels that result from the false beliefs and unloving behavior of the ego wounded self – as opposed to the feelings that come from life – are anxiety, depression, anger, aloneness, neediness, emptiness, misery, guilt, shame, jealousy, fear of a perceived rather than an actual threat, and so on. These feelings are letting you know that you are off track in your thinking and behavior and need to be explored through the Inner Bonding process. 

All of your feelings are a form of inner guidance, either letting you know whether what you are doing and thinking is right or wrong for you, or letting you know that you need to compassionately nurture yourself. They let you know whether someone is open or closed, dangerous or safe. The tightness in your stomach in reaction to someone’s threatening anger tells you something important, as is the safety you feel when someone is being truly giving. Your anxiety, anger or depression may be telling you that you are rejecting and abandoning yourself, while your peace and joy let you know that you are being loving to yourself. Trusting these feelings and discovering what they are telling you will help you take personal responsibility for your own feelings. 

Inner Bonding is a spiritually based, not religiously based, healing pathway, and it was lovely to see spirit portrayed in both Frozen I and II through the spirits of earth, wind, air, and fire, as well as through the troll, Grandfather Pabbie, who is a spiritual leader. It’s the Grandfather Pabbie who offers both of these profound lessons. Also, both sisters, Queen Elsa and Princess Anna, listen to their inner and higher voices that guide them and help them discover the truth about their past and the loving actions they need to take to rectify the wrong that is causing problems for their village.

A profound moment in Frozen II is how Anna manages the deep grief of believing she has lost everything. Olaf, Elsa, and maybe Christof, her beloved boyfriend, are gone forever to her in that moment, yet she listens to her inner voice and does the next right thing, which was the loving thing. She remembers Grandfather Pabbie’s lesson, “Do the next right thing,” and shows up as a loving adult, even in the face of her fear and grief.

The practice of Inner Bonding teaches you how to access your higher guidance and receive the strength necessary to take the loving action – the next right thing. It’s such amazing role-modeling when Anna does the next right thing even in the face of feeling so alone and lost and devastated by grief.

Another aspect of Inner Bonding is the wounded self. The films also brilliantly portray aspects of the wounded self. In Frozen I, Prince Hans represents the wounded self, and in Frozen II, Else’s and Anna’s grandfather is the wounded self. 

Prince Hans in Frozen I is a typical narcissist – acting charming but manipulating the whole time, and incapable of love. Elsa’s and Anna’s grandfather, in Frozen II, coming from fear of the magic and power of the forest people, seemingly offers them a gift of a dam, and when the forest people complain that their crops are dying from lack of water, he attacks and kills their leader. 

We all have a wounded self and it’s helpful to imagine the wounded self as a wounded child or adolescent who learned to be an unloving adult. Our wounded self is often a mirror image of one or both of our parents, whom we have internalized. Even though we may have said, “I’ll never be like that,” our wounded self may have learned to be just like our parents. 

Unlike the true self, the inner child, which is a feeling aspect of us, the wounded self is a thought aspect. It is housed in the left lower brain, the left amygdala. The left amygdala is the seat of our fight or flight stress response and houses our false beliefs that often trigger the stress response. 

The wounded self is the aspect of us that carries our fears, false beliefs, and controlling behavior. Both the lying and manipulative Prince Hans and the murdering grandfather reflect these aspects of the wounded self.

Another important aspect of Inner Bonding is our loving adult, but most of us have never developed or have difficulty identifying our loving adult. Many people seek a loving adult beyond ourselves to love us and nurture us, but in fact, our loving adult lies within. The loving adult is who we are when we are open to learning about loving ourselves and others, and we are connected with our higher source of love and truth. The loving adult is the vehicle through which the spirit of love and compassion thinks and acts. The loving adult receives love, truth, and power from spirit and then takes loving action in our highest good. 

In both movies, by the end of the movies, Elsa, Anna, and Christof are loving adults, showing love and courage even in the face of fear. They consistently listen to their higher guidance and to what they know is loving and take the loving action – the next right thing. Christof is able to talk with his reindeer, Sven, who, along with Grandfather Pabbie, often guides him in the next right thing, the loving action.

Many of us do not yet have a powerful, spiritually connected loving adult who knows how to nurture and truly protect us and love others without trying to control them. Many of us do not have a loving adult who knows how to set appropriate inner boundaries against our harming ourselves with addictive behavior. Nor do we have a loving adult who knows how to set loving limits against harming or being harmed by others. This is because we may have had little or no role modeling on how to be a loving adult. If your parents and their parents did not know how to take loving care of themselves, they could not provide the necessary role modeling. That’s why most people don’t know how to take loving care of themselves in the face of other’s anger, blame, or judgment, or in the face of challenging situations.

I love the role modeling that Elsa, Anna, and Christof portray at the end of Frozen I and Frozen II. In Frozen II, Elsa puts her life on the line to find out the truth about what her grandfather did that created the imbalance in nature that put their peaceful little town of Arendelle in danger. The town is falling apart due to the imbalance in nature caused by their grandfather’s betrayal of the Forest people. The Forest people are guided by nature – the spirits of earth, air, water, and fire, but the evil Grandfather of Anna and Elsa betrayed nature by cutting off their source of water and murdering their leader.

Anna, in Frozen II, in the face of being completely alone and even with her terrible grief over believing she lost all her loved ones, does the next right thing anyway. Like Elsa, she also puts her life on the line and finds a way to destroy the dam that her grandfather built to destroy the forest people. Christof, who loves Anna and doesn’t know where she is, stays present enough to be available to save Anna’s life as the dam is collapsing. Elsa, Anna, and Christof focused on what was loving rather than on their fear. This is what a loving adult does.    

The consistent practice of Inner Bonding develops your powerful loving adult. You don’t need to have had role models for being a loving adult, because, through your Inner Bonding practice, you can learn to access your higher guidance as a role model for loving action. 

Until you are in the process of developing a loving adult, the wounded self is in charge with the intent to control. You always have the choice to shift your intent from controlling to loving.

Now, back to the lesson in Frozen I, “An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.” Anna’s heart is inadvertently frozen by her sister Elsa, due to Elsa’s out-of-control fear that causes her to use her magic to create ice and snow. Without meaning to, the ice goes into Anna’s heart and freezes her heart. Christof takes her to the trolls, who raised him, to find out how to help Anna, who is slowly dying.  But grandfather Pabbie tells them that only an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.

From then, we are led to believe that the act of true love is “loves first kiss” – a kiss from the man who loves Anna, Prince Hans. Christoff loves Anna, but he believes that Anna love Prince Hans, and that Prince Hans loves Anna, so his act of love is that he takes her to Prince Hans. But Prince Hans wants Anna to die so he can inherit the kingdom of Arendelle. 

Olaf rescues Anna, and in an act of true love on the part of Anna, she saves Elsa’s life from the treachery of Prince Hans, who is trying to kill Elsa. In that moment Anna is completely frozen, and everyone thinks she is dead, but because she performed an act of true love, her heart thaws and so does the rest of her body. Instead of the act of true love coming from someone else who loves Anna, the act of true love that thaws her heart is her own act of true love in saving her sister.

This is a powerful concept – that our heart opens when we chose acts of true love. Our heart opening doesn’t come from someone else’s love – it comes from our own expressions of love. Too often, people make others responsible for whether or not they are open and loving, instead of loving themselves and others, which is what opens the heart. 

As Anna thaws in Elsa’s arms and Elsa, who has been sobbing while holding the frozen Anna, realizes that Anna is alive and risked her life to save Elsa, her beloved sister, Elsa says, “You risked your life to save me,” and Anna says, “I love you.” Olaf smiles and brings the lesson home by saying, “An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.”

Acts of true love and doing the next right thing often take courage – the courage of the loving adult.

Do you know when you are being a loving adult and when you are operating from your wounded self? 

As I said earlier, you are being a loving adult when you are open to learning about loving yourself and others, and you are connected with your source of spiritual guidance. Disconnected from guidance, you are operating from your wounded self. The reason we need to be connected with our guidance is because we have so few role models in life and the media for a loving adult, which is why I wanted to write about Frozen and point out the role-modeling. 

The loving adult is the part of us that can take action. Our actions are either being guided by our higher guidance or by our wounded self. Our actions will be loving to ourselves and others when they are guided by our higher guidance, and they will be unloving to ourselves and others when guided by our wounded self.

The loving adult puts Divine love into motion by taking loving action on your behalf and on behalf of others who need your help and protection.

The loving adult is the part of us that opens to learning about taking full responsibility for our own feelings and behavior. The loving adult takes responsibility for learning from our pain and for bringing us joy.

When we are operating as a loving adult, we are compassionate, caring, and empathetic with ourselves and others.

The loving adult is never judgmental – that is the realm of the wounded self. 

Instead of trying to control our own feelings and trying to control others and the outcome of things, the loving adult is deeply curious about the good reasons we and others have for our feelings and behavior. We are open to outcomes rather than invested in outcomes. The loving adult is open to learning about how to nurture yourself, how to meet your needs, and how to protect yourself in loving ways rather than in controlling ways. The loving adult doesn’t consciously indulge in behaviors that harm yourself or others. The loving adult doesn’t have to know what is loving – it just needs to open to learning with your higher guidance regarding what is loving in any given moment. This is what we saw Elsa, Anna, and Christof do in the Frozen movies.

The loving adult operates from love and faith rather than allowing fear to guide us. When we are being guided by fear, we are in our wounded self. When we are guided by love, we are in our loving adult. The loving adult is the part of us that knows through direct experience that we are always being guided in our highest good to do the next right thing, the act of true love, while the wounded self is incapable of accessing our source of love and truth. The frequency of the wounded self is too low to access the higher frequency of our spiritual guidance. The wounded self may or may not believe that we have a source of higher guidance, but when we are in our wounded self, our heart is closed, so we don’t have the ability to experience Divine love and truth.

The loving adult is devoted to doing whatever it takes to heal the fears and false beliefs of the wounded self. It embraces the wounded self with firmness, love, and compassion, never with judgment. 

The loving adult is who we are when we are in this present moment, in the now, rather than in the past or future. 

When we are focused in the past or future, we are operating from our wounded self. If Elsa, Anna, or Christof had been in the wounded self focused on their fears of the future, they could not have heard their guidance that told them what the next right thing was. This is so well role modeled by Anna when, in spite of her fear and grief, she did the next right thing by destroying the bridge and rebalancing nature, even though she believed that the rush of water would destroy her beloved Arendelle. And because she took this very brave and courageous action, she saved Elsa’s life again, which enabled Elsa to save Arendelle.

We never know what the result will be of our loving actions, but a loving adult does them anyway because these acts of true love open our heart and sometimes open the hearts of others, and these acts are the next right thing.  

The touch of the loving adult is filled with the giving of love. It’s a healing touch that demands nothing. The touch of the wounded self is a taking touch, giving to get something back. There is a completely different energy in the touch of the loving adult and the touch of the wounded self. If you find yourself shying away from someone’s touch, it’s likely because they are in their wounded self, and if someone shies away from your touch, it is likely you are in your wounded self, trying to get something rather than give love. Offering “warm hugs,” like Olaf loves, can be very healing to others. The loving adult becomes a channel of Divine love, and naturally transmits healing energy. As many of us know, this is vital for infants and small children. Loving holding is always soothing and healing.

The loving adult knows that there is only one dependable source of love, and it isn’t other people. Yet many people make others their source of love.

Do you make others your dependable source of love – your higher power? This can cause many problems in relationships. For example, Jay and Christy

consulted with me because they had been married only a year and were having problems. Jay was often angry at Christy, and Christy felt shut down to Jay.

“Jay,” I asked him, “What are you wanting from Christy that you are not getting?”

“I want her to be my source of love,” he said. “She is my wife, and she should be my dependable source of love.”

Jay was doing what many people do in relationships – he was making Christy his higher power. Having no spiritual connection of his own, he kept trying to access love through Christy. Christy, feeling pulled on by Jay to fill the emptiness caused by his self-abandonment, had withdrawn.

We all need a dependable source of love, but to expect another to be that dependable source creates the codependency that leads to the relationship difficulties that Jay and Christy were experiencing.

When we were small, our parents were supposed to be our dependable source of love. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t know how to love us in the way we needed to be loved, nor did they know how to be a dependable source of love for their own inner child. Not receiving what we needed from our parents or other caregivers, and not having role models of how to bring love to ourselves, most of us never learned how to tap into the one and only dependable source of love.

Between media and fairy tales, we may grow up expecting that our partner will be that dependable source of love, and, like Jay, we get angry when this is not what’s happening. In the loving relationship between Anna and Christof, we never see either of them making the other responsible for their feelings. While at the beginning of Frozen I, Anna has no idea what a loving relationship is like with a man, and even has no idea what love is – which is why she falls for the lying, manipulative and narcissistic Prince Hans, by Frozen II she has matured into a strong and loving woman. It takes Olaf, who is love, to teach her about love, and if we are open to our inner and higher guidance, we too can learn about what love really is. 

When Anna saves Elsa’s life at the end of Frozen I and tells Elsa that she did it because she loves her, Elsa finally realizes that her gift of creating ice and snow comes from fear, and that what can thaw a frozen heart is also what can melt the snow and ice – which is love. “Love, of course,” she says, and extends her love, bringing back a beautiful spring to Arendelle. She receives the love from spirit and extends it out.

Another person cannot be your dependable source of love, for many reasons:

• They are not with you 24/7.
• They likely don’t want the job.
• They might leave or die.
• They might feel pulled on, like Christy, and resist and shut down.
• They might not even know how to tap into their own dependable source of love, so they don’t have love to share with you.
• They might expect you to be their dependable source of love and may be angry at you when you aren’t.

As an adult, it is risky business to rely on another for your dependable source of love. Another person was never meant to be your higher power.

And why should they be? You have your own higher power, your own dependable source of love! The challenge is to let go of trying to get the love you need from your partner or another person and learn to open to spirit for your dependable source of love.

It took me a long time to learn this. For much of my adult life, until Inner Bonding, I had no idea that it was my responsibility to open to spirit for my dependable source of Love.

Not that it isn’t wonderful when others are loving to us, and I’ve often said that the sharing of love is the highest experience of life. But when you are needy and dependent on another for your dependable source of love, you not only can’t share love, but you will also never feel the safety and fullness that comes from opening to THE dependable source of love, and then being able to share love.

When you shift your intent from getting love from another to being loving to yourself and others, your heart opens to the love that is always here for you. The moment your intent is to be loving, spirit fills you with the light of love that is infinitely more powerful than anything you could ever get from another. And that’s when you get filled up with love to share with your loved ones, and that’s when you have the strength and courage to do the next right thing by expressing your acts of true love.

I invite you join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

I invite you to learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30-Day video home-study course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my new book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.